


I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Angst, Ayres Farm, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Love, Religion, Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-15 19:30:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16069784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Guilt, from the Old Englishgylt, of obscure origin.





	I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep

Henry dreamt of snow. Of angels, visitations with flaming swords, the cold of the snow a burning sword, a wing of feathers touching his face. Home, his name called across a white field _Henry, Henry_ , the wood-smoke in the white air, a time before. Before her blue eyes looked up at him, her face like a flower, a white violet. There was a time before he ever touched her, when he had only one death on his conscience, the slow death in the slow, implacable cold of a Northern winter.

Ice burned. Water burned in all its forms. She handed him a cup of tea, flavored with lemon thyme, the steam stinging his eyes. She said his name, _Henry_ , she said _Henry, please, please won’t you_ , and he looked away. He saw a white field through the window, acres of snow, thigh-deep, deep as the water had been when he became a murderer. He saw her white face, held in his two hands.

He waited. He prayed to the God of Mary von Olnhausen, who had created mathematics. To the God of Jedediah Foster, who had created the scalpel and the eye to see form where there was annihilation. He prayed to the God of Emma Green, who promised a meadow of flowers, Queen Anne’s lace like her white face. He prayed to Tom Fairfax, who’d died, not a martyr. Not a saint. A boy he’d coaxed to drink a glass of whiskey, the gold of sunlight, rich as the kiss of a woman who took a lover.

The nuns watched over him. He knew it and he didn’t mind. Perhaps they knew something he didn’t. He knew ice and the river. He knew Emma’s face in his hands, the smile she gave her lover. He knew what he felt like when a man died, how narrow a man’s throat was.

Henry dreamt of the white sky, pregnant with snow. Of ice, armoring a river. Of a man’s eyes dulled. He dreamt of Emma’s breast, white, sweetly curved. A scythe. An angel’s scimitar. Justice, and not, never, mercy.

**Author's Note:**

> A reflection on tortoiseshells's most recent piece, I also claim self-indulgence in writing this.
> 
> The title is from Whitman's "The Wound-Dresser."


End file.
